LA-based Americana singer/songwriter Emily Zuzik will be releasing her 7th solo album album, age + alchemy, this coming May, and draws on a background in Pop and Rock bands, as well as her collaborative projects with Tedeschi Trucks/David Bowie bassist Tim Lefebvre and her electronic outfit Woves. Her singer/songwriter music is inspired by “the film-noir essence of Los Angeles’ haunted past” and also by the Memphis Stax sound.
Today, we’re very pleased to premier her track from the upcoming album, “Love’s About Taking The Fall”, alongside its accompanying video which Zuzik created and edited. It will be released widely on March 14th, 2025. The new track was co-Produced with Americana musician/Producer, Ted Russell Kamp, who was Shooter Jenning’s longtime bass player.
The song “Love’s About Taking The Fall” has an appealing directness that’s as interwoven in the lyrics and vocals as it is in the bass line. It’s very much an invitation to take part in a conversation between two people who have a potential relationship brewing or under consideration, but it’s also a kind of challenge to the other party. In that sense, it admits a certain peril or risk in engaging in this relationship, or maybe any close relationship, as the title suggests. We are very used to the phrase “fall in love” and the romantic ideas it conjures up, but when Zuzik turns that phrase around as “Love’s About Taking The Fall”, we have to reconsider what you put on the line when you allow yourself to fall for someone else. Is it an acceptable risk? Are we brave or strong enough to make that step into the unknown? The song’s speaker has put their attitude up front. They are aware of the risks and have still doubled down. But will the other party meet them half-way? The matter is open to interpretation. Much of the emotion and attitude of the song is supported via the vocals, but the saxophone really adds to that feeling of certainty on the part of the speaker.
The track’s video is very much about mood and vibe, and Zuzik does a lot to make it feel as relatable and recognizable to the lives we live as possible. She chooses bar settings that we might find down the street, uses footage of friends having a good time, and couples who might be in the first flush of considering a relationship while meeting at a bar. The live singing footage she also provides not only pulls the video into a single perspective point, but her use of eye contact and body language builds on the bold challenge and invitation that are part of the track itself. A little more of the celebratory feeling that’s a potential outcome for the couple in the song creeps in through the video’s varied moods, too. Overall, the video reinforces the feeling of “playing for keeps”, that the vantage point in the song is one of self-assurance and certainty, even if they are aware that the other party might not, in the end, step up. There’s the lingering feeling, that if they back down from this invite, it’s their own loss. That means that the song’s speaker is not so much vulnerable as self-possessed.
Emily Zuzik shares about the new single and video:
“I wrote the song while on my first trip from my home during Covid in Jan 2021, a getaway with my family to Cambria, CA across from Moonstone Beach. We were particularly isolated due to health issues in my family, so the break from our usual homelife was very inspiring. I was sitting outside on a porch at the house we rented for a week while the sun was setting over the beach. I remember just jamming on that A major chord and wanting to write something like The Pretenders, with a cool rock feel. The last verse of the song came later as I was listening to 70s Dylan for inspo. I was riffing on a vibe from Serve Somebody and the words just came…
The song tells a story of a woman and a man meeting up in a bar to kind of make or break the relationship they’re in. I always knew the video would be a series of friends and lovers in a bar doing what folks do there–drink, dance, celebrate, play games, flirt, etc. Given the budget I had and a desire to get my hands dirty on the creative side, I shot some footage to that end and then sourced video from libraries to cut the video together. I had Art Hays shoot footage of him playing that ripping saxophone solo to add into the mix.
I was going for a mood more than technological flair. It kept with the DIY spirit of this EP. The song itself is an invitation and call to arms by the singer/songwriter. Kind of a put up or shut up moment. The world in the bar has everything and nothing to do with the conversation. It’s a place and moment in time that feeds the conversation in the lyrics as well as isolates it. Some of the bar footage I shot came from a friend’s birthday party at a local joint.”
“Love’s About Taking The Fall” was mixed by Josh Kessler at Bushwick Studio, mastered by Duncan Stanbury, written by Emily Zuzik, with Zuzik on vocals, Ted Russell Kamp on bass, Brian Whelan on electric guitar and Hammond organ, Art Hays on saxophone, and Topher Allis on drums and percussion.
Emily Zuzik has a show coming up this week:
- Thursday, March 6, 2025
- 6:45 PM 9:00 PM
- Emily Zuzik/Maenades Music (map)
Come out seaside with your host Michael Ubaldini for another installment of Outlaws of Folk at Bogarts in Seal Beach. Besides Michael and Emily, Feter Martin Homer will be on the bill that evening. – Bogarts, 905 Ocean Avenue, Seal Beach, CA
